


Death in Dying

by Helholden



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Coping, F/M, Forced Bonding, Love/Hate, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2011191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Understanding is the beginning of empathy, and empathy is a building block to caring. She hates him for that. Sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death in Dying

 

_“And finds, with keen, discriminating sight,_

_Black’s not so black—nor white so very white.”_

\- George Canning

 

 

 

I.

 

Claire remembers the ice cold touch of his hands.

 

He wasn’t even touching her. It’s the funny part. She was held a foot off the ground by air. Sheer force of will threw her onto the wall. An exerted force of gravity kept her there—nothing more. It’d be easy if it was more, but it’s not. It’s funny how she still needs to imagine hands to make it real as if the psycho can’t torment her enough with air and magic tricks. She has an ability, but it’s nothing like his. It’s not _powerful_.

 

Then, why did he come? If it’s not powerful, why was he after it?

 

It’s a question she can never seem to answer.

 

 

 

II.

 

His hands are as black as his eyes—or are they another color altogether? Claire has trouble remembering the details. Details are meaningless in the face of fear. The kind of fear that compresses in on the chest like an unforeseen pressure. There’s nothing for a moment, and then everything—blankness, breadth, darkness, a flash of light behind her eyes, endless screaming.

 

She opens her eyes to see the ceiling. It should be spattered in red like her heart. Then again, it could be her brain. Her skull is severed and open like she’s on an autopsy table. She’s been on one of those before. Once before, when she died. She remembers it was just as cold.

 

She recalls being unable to move, but trying. It was like a twitch in the back of her mind and only involuntary ticks came out of it— _because Sylar’s in her brain_ , or he’s on it, and then he’s touching it with the tip of his finger. Her body shudders as he traces his touch along the squishy matter. Imagined phantom touches, not real. She can feel it, though. She can always feel it. She can never stop _feeling_ it—

 

Claire is getting her tenses mixed up. That’s the problem with bad memories. They come back to the present as if they are still happening now in this very moment.

 

Unending torment. That’s what she deals with.

 

It’s a small price to pay, she thinks, for the knowledge she has now.

 

 

 

III.

 

There are no words to describe what he did to her. There are some places of the body that are just private, never meant to be touched. Not without permission, and sometimes not even with that. He went somewhere no one was supposed to go, and she has to ask herself if he feels remorse for that. Does he regret what he did to her? It’s a question she needs to stop asking herself.

 

The surgical hands replaced her skull. She healed on her own. It was hard to get up after that. Her body had lain still as she stared up at the ceiling, trying to cope with a situation that could not be coped with.

 

Her father likes to tell all sorts of stories about being an adult.

 

She wants to be an adult, a myth her father has painted for her. The flawed man telling the impressionable teenager how to be. The irony is not lost on her. She’s smarter than a lot of people give her credit for, she knows.

 

It doesn’t mean she speaks about it out loud.

 

 

 

IV.

 

The way he put her back together was—no, the word is foreign on her tongue, but she speaks it anyway. _Lovingly_. Sylar placed her back together when he could have let her die. He killed all the others. Why not her? He just let her live, and he never explained why.

 

Why didn’t he just kill her? One perfect stab in the back of her neck, and she would have been finished. The end. Close the curtains. The play is over.

 

She sat up. The shadow of his back was blue. She remembers that. He stood like a navy blue silhouette against the front door, shrouded by the light coming in from the glass. She thought she saw a glow near his head even as hers was caked in halo of dried blood.

 

_Why?_

 

He never answered her. He told her lies just like her father. She likes to think they were lies, because even if it was the catalyst, what would he care about passing these abilities onto other people? Where’s the fun in a world full of people like them? He wouldn’t be so special anymore. Neither would she. Claire used to think it was the catalyst he was talking about, but now she’s not so sure.

 

Sylar didn’t want to kill her. All of this time, and he never wanted to kill her. He only wanted a piece of her. It’s not that he has to kill. He has to _see_. After all of this time, she finally sees it, too. She understands him in a way she never wanted to understand him.

 

Understanding is the beginning of empathy, and empathy is a building block to caring.

 

She closes her eyes, and she has another nightmare. He smiles at her, and for once—or twice, or maybe even the millionth time behind her eyes—it’s not a killer she sees. It’s just a man, and Claire remembers his hands were actually warm when they touched her.

 

She hates him for that.

 

 

 

V.

 

The knowledge frightens her. Like the way he threw her onto the wall with sheer force of will. Like the way an exerted force of gravity kept her there. Things shouldn’t be that simple, but they are. It’s her trying to complicate things, trying to come up with solutions that don’t suit the problem. Nothing more. It’d be easy if it was more, but it’s not and she needs to live with that.

 

Claire knows things about him she wished she never knew. She knows his hands weren’t black—they were pink splashed with red. His eyes were hazel, and maybe they had a hint of green in them when the light fractured and bent off of them. His breath was warm, and his hands were gentle on her brain. It’s a funny thought when she really thinks about it.

 

After all of this time, she finally sees. She understands him in a way she never wanted to understand him.

 

She hates him for that.

 

Sometimes.

 

 


End file.
